


Too Big For Words

by CrackingLamb



Series: One Shot Wonders, A Collection of Junkyard Dog Stories [5]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Internal Monologue, Reminiscence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 20:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12779121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: A rambling little piece that could equally be called 'Why Nora Loves Ghouls So Much'.





	Too Big For Words

**Author's Note:**

> Corresponds with 'Chapter Nine - Links' in Junkyard Dogs

Nora stood in the lee of the broken down diner just below the Slog and looked at the stars. They wheeled and danced in their timeless steps, the whole sky painted with the broad brush of the Milky Way overheard. The moon crossed over it, a cookie with a bite taken out of it shaped shadow against the brilliance of a million stars.

 _Very poetic_ , _Nora_ , Nate’s voice whispered.

 _Hello, grief, my old friend_ , she thought back to him. She thought he’d gone. She hadn’t heard his voice in days, not since…

_Not since you made love to another man._

_Ghoul_ , she corrected.

 _Man_ , Nate was insistent. _Beauty is deeper than skin, no matter what the magazines told you. You know this_.

 _I do_ , she agreed with herself.

She turned on her heel and looked up the hill to see the glow of the settlers’ houses up on the roof of the bathhouse. She’d built those houses with her own two hands. Oh, helped of course, by Wiseman and Holly and Jones and Deirdre. Even Arlen Glass had come out of his shell – literally since his tiny workshop was essentially his home – and lent a hand. She thought back to her first days in this world that felt like another lifetime but were really only half a year away.

She’d come to this place in the rain, lost, freezing, scared half to death. She was on her way to Finch Farm for the first time, before she knew of the Forged in Saugus Ironworks. Before she knew how close she’d come to a fiery death that night if they’d seen her. She hadn’t been used to ghoulish faces and had recoiled in instantaneous horror at the sight of them; scarred, noseless, bald and with deep inky eyes on all of them. But then Wiseman spoke, and memory was stronger than fear.

She’d told Hancock that Wiseman reminded her of her grandfather, and so he did. That gravel and hoarseness, the spit and tar as Gramps used to say. They were nearly identical and ignoring the evidence of her eyes, her heartrate had slowed, her breath had caught up to her and she had relaxed. They’d made her welcome, Wiseman and Holly and the others. Brought her in out of the rain, didn’t shame her for her reaction, which nonetheless shamed her, and gave her supper and a bed. And asked nothing in return.

 _That was the turning point_ , Nate said. _They were the first people you’d met since waking up to this nightmare world who hadn’t asked for a thing. Not even caps for your room and board. I knew then I’d never get you back_.

 _I’m aware, thank you. I was there. And you can’t get me back, you’re dead_.

“Why do you lose your noses?” she remembered asking that night, all naivety and morbid curiosity. Holly had laughed, pronounced her a keeper and wandered off to her bed.

“No one knows,” Wiseman had replied to her question, his growly voice rolling over her like something nearly forgotten. Her grandfather’s vocal tones, gravelly and smoky, vocal chords scorched and tortured from a life of working in a coal mine, rolled out of this stranger’s mouth. Gramps would tell her the most wonderful stories in his broken voice, and as a little girl, it soothed her to sleep more than once when her parents were fighting before their divorce. Wiseman told what it was like to be a ghoul in that same kind of voice. The similarity had given her a link to attach to the past, a past no one now knew…except for certain ghouls.

“Other extremities remain just fine, fingers, toes,” Wiseman went on. “It seems to be the cartilage parts that disintegrate. Noses, ears.” He swiped a hand over his bald head. “I think the hair goes because the follicles get clogged by the changes in the skin. Very few of us get to keep our hair.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.” With that simple answer she grew too abashed to ask anything more.

Once she’d finished up with Finch Farm, she went back to the Slog, and they welcomed her. She’d spent hours with Holly, gossiping about old movie stars they’d liked, reminiscing about the music that had been lost and the men they no longer could dance with. Her muddled mind couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that she and Holly were about the same age chronologically. She had just slept through all the intervening years that Holly had lived. She and Wiseman had talked about tarberries, and she’d lent a hand clearing away debris from the tangled roots of the plants. Together they’d answered her questions and taught her how to spot the differences between individuals based on their scar patterns.

“A new set of features,” Wiseman called it.

When the super mutants came, she fought them off, defending her new friends at risk to her own life. And Wiseman told her of his wish that the Slog could be a place for anyone to live, ghoul or human. That their friendship was proof enough that it could be done. She’d agreed to help, because no one should live scared and alone in this wasteland. She’d poured her resources into the little farm until it was thriving community. And now it was her favorite place to stay when she had rare time off.

By the time Nora had stumbled into Goodneighbor, bleeding, broken and so past exhaustion she’d come out the other side, ghoul faces were as commonplace to her as humans, or robots, or super mutants. But of all those things, only ghouls had been willing to share their knowledge and their friendship without asking anything in return. Meeting Hancock hadn’t been a shock. In fact, she was so used to ghoulish faces that she could see in his bone structure what he must have looked like before. She could see past the broken capillaries in his eyes, past the missing septum and nostrils, past the mangled auricles of his ears, past the mesh-like pattern of scars across his face and hands. Ghouls _were_ proof that beauty being skin deep was a lie.

Of course, she knew not all ghouls were good, caring people. Sinjun had been a ghoul, and a nastier piece of work she’d rarely seen, even in the Commonwealth. Eddie Winter was a ghoul, from her own time even. She could remember reading about his trial in the papers, and had been grateful she wasn’t a part of that mess since she’d just had Shaun. She’d felt a vengeful satisfaction in helping Nick Valentine end his miserable life. And the Triggermen she’d killed for Charlie…well, for Hancock really…they had turned on their own kind. Selfish and greedy, the whole lot of them. No different than raiders in her mind. And Bobbi No-Nose, the scheming, lying bitch who nonetheless ultimately brought her closer to Hancock’s side.

 _Worth it_ , she thought to herself. Nate was silent on the matter, for once.

But on the other side of that coin was Daisy, Ham, Davis from the Neighborhood Watch, Kent, Edward, all the ghouls of the Slog…and Hancock himself. Especially Hancock. Hancock made her happy. He made her feel like there was something worth living for.

 _You already had something worth living for,_ Nate reminded her.

 _Our baby, who’s not a baby at all anymore_.

The stars lost their appeal as she thought about what the future would bring. The Glowing Sea, a way into the Institute. Finding her lost son.

 _Kellogg called you resilient_ , Nate went on, a murmur only she could hear. _He wasn’t lying_.

 _I know_.

“Hey, Sunshine, you down here?” Hancock called from the road.

“Yeah, I’m here,” she replied, stepping out from the side of the diner so he could see her.

“Ya know, it’s dangerous out here by yourself.”

“I know. I just wanted to see the stars.” He came and put his arm around her waist, hugging her to him. In his other hand he held his shotgun over his shoulder, always prepared to fend off anything that might be interested in getting in her way. She smiled at him in the darkness, her heart swelling until she could barely breathe. How had she fallen so hard for this man, this perfectly adapted being of the new world? She couldn’t even begin to express it.

“What’s that for?”

“I love your face, you know that?”

“You out here doin’ chems without me, love?” he scoffed.

“I’m serious. I do. It’s part of who you are, and I love you, so, I love your face.”

“Sunshine, you’re crazy.”

“Hmm, you’ve mentioned that in the past.”

“I ain’t wrong.” Still, she could just see the gleam of his teeth, so she knew he was smiling. She tipped her head all the way back, resting it on his shoulder. He shook his head at her ruefully and kissed her forehead. “C’mon, crazy, they’re waiting for us at the fire pit.”

“All right.” Her hand slipped into his, his warm, gnarled fingers twining with hers as they walked back up to the Slog and the friends at the other end of the road.

 _Goodnight, my heart_ , Nate whispered, fading away into nothingness. _It’s time for me to move on_.


End file.
